Presenting "The Riddle of Homeownership" and reinventing homeownership

Leading legal scholar professor from the University of Chicago Law School Lee Fennell will visit the UH Law School as the 2009 lecturer of the Gifford/Starn O'Toole Marcus & Fisher Distinguished Lectureship in Real Property on Monday, November 23, 2009. She will give a presentation entitled "The Riddle of Homeownership, " in which she shares insights about reinventing homeownership through innovations that increase the flexibility of property law and that address simmering, unresolved issues of neighborhood control and community composition. The lecture will be held at the Law School's moot courtroom at 4:30pm with a light reception to follow. This event is free and open to the public. RSVP to lawevent@hawaii.edu or call 956-8478.

Professor Fennell received her JD magna cum laude from Georgetown University Law Center in 1990. She came to the University of Chicago Law School as a Bigelow Fellow and Lecturer in Law in 1999, after practicing at Pettit & Martin, the State and Local Legal Center, and the Virginia School Boards Association. In 2001, she became an assistant professor at the University of Texas School of Law, and an associate professor at the University of Illinois College of Law in 2004. She was promoted to full professor at Illinois in 2006 and returned to the University of Chicago faculty as a professor in 2007. She has held visiting positions at Yale Law School, NYU School of Law, and the University of Virginia School of Law. Her teaching and research interests include property, torts, land use, housing, social welfare law, state and local government law, and public finance. Author of more than 20 articles and book chapters, she recently published The Unbounded Home: Property Values Beyond Property Lines (Yale University Press 2009).

The Gifford Foundation established a Distinguished Lectureship in Real Property in 2002 to honor David L. Callies, the Benjamin A. Kudo Professor of Law, and Jerry M. Hiatt (‘77), prominent Big Island attorney, for their superior work in the field of real property. Starn O’Toole Marcus & Fisher has been a generous supporter of the Law School in many ways, including recent sponsorship of this Lectureship.

The 2010 Gifford/Starn O’Toole, Marcus & Fisher Distinguished Lecturer is Professor Kevin Gray, Dean of Trinity College, Cambridge, and past law department chair, Cambridge University and Fellow of the British Academy. He is the coauthor of Elements of Land Law (5th ed.)